Tag Archives: Desiderata

Recently, Hubby started using RPGM VX Ace. I had used it before, but he hadn’t. The verdict that came back was to remake Desiderata in the newer program. It means a lot of work, especially for me, since I do all of the eventing work. Some events will change, although I’m sure a great deal will remain the same. NPCs will be easier to make, and thus will probably end up with more variety. And I’ll finally be able to get over that wizard hurdle.

Some of the new maps are already done. Including a big world map!

Oh, that reminds me. A lot of the geography is going to change.

The sprites will probably be the same, although I haven’t make an absolute decision. Better maps may mean more optional events and definitely a better setting in which to tell the story. My biggest job right now is prepping to move/recreate what’s already done.

Not making very much headway in regards to the wizards. Since I’ve been at my mum’s house, I don’t have a computer with RPG Maker VX on it–oh wait Hubby just brought my netbook over. That’ll change some things. But not at the moment.

Anyway, pre-digression, I didn’t have access to the program before, so I was writing out my eventing stuff in Evernote. It’s surprisingly easy and remarkably time-consuming. It makes it hard for me to see how long the scene runs before getting to the input and testing process, though.

It’s not just a talk-y scene (none of them should be), but there is a lot of talking in it. Exposition, like. That’s not always the easiest at the best of times. Especially since I’m still not sure of Skal’s character.

Just figuring out the music for the scene was more work than I expected. It’d be nice if this turns out to be an inordinate amount of work, and then when it plays out, becomes one of my favourite scenes. That ain’t gonna happen, but it’d be nice.

Too tired to think. Trying to finish the last hundred or so pages of Runemarks.

Ooh! Something cool did happen. I took a test on lernu.net that I was a bit worried about, as I had a very open-ended question at the end of this one. When I got the tutor’s reply, not only did I apparently answer everything correctly or well, but my story at the end was well-received. Yay. Loss of stress and happy thoughts!

I’ve finally stopped procrastinating (to some extent) on those quests that I’ve been mentally referring to as the wizard hires. Since they all give different information and two of them are potential love interests, I decided to start with the one who has the simplest personality and who is not a romantic path. He’s one of my favourite characters now, in a “lite” sort of way. Mostly because he is low maintenance.

But writing this part made me realise something that I hadn’t thought of, and it’s tripping me up a bit.

The reason that the player sought out a wizard in the first place is that the main characters need to find a man, and dig up information on these weird cheap-o items that aren’t magical and yet somehow are magical. The man they have to find is Thorn’s dad (Thorn is one of the main characters).

I have not come up with much on Thorn’s dad. By which I mean, he is barely developed. And even that makes it sound like I have put more thought into it than I actually have. He’s meant to be half-non-human, in a significant way that ties into the plot. He went AWOL on his daughter when she was probably an infant or at least a toddler, and she was probably always aware that he’d had a good reason. Or at least, she believed he had a good reason.

So technically, she doesn’t know much about him either. Callo and Nod don’t know anything about him… Wait.

Callo could possibly discover/realise that he knows lots about him. He could have found a journal that belonged to Timoran (the dad–and I had to search the database to recall his name), and that could lead to a side-scene wherein Thorn speaks privately to Callo about what he learned and did not tell the wizard in order to locate Timoran.

This, boys and girls, is what journals and blogs are good for: stream of consciousness thinking.

It could go this way for each wizard, with Callo giving information on the dad (as we have mostly referred to him), but I don’t know. Are there other options? As boring as it can get to write the same things over and over, plus difficult when trying to write it a different way, there’s no reason to do it differently other than… well, to do it differently.

So I started the day at half past two. Not from the hopping Santa-was-here-esque excitement of it being my birthday, but from being in intense pain and Owen hitting me in the bladder. I’ll be 35 weeks on Monday. Might look into how possible it is for me to sleep sitting up, as I cannot lie on my back (duh) and lying on my side is starting to feel like medieval torture.

I only managed to get to about 157 or so gold in HabitRPG. But when one considers that I started the day with 108 coins, that’s probably pretty good. Also an indicator of just how much it’s possible to even do in a day.

Dunno if I got enough sleep. I think we went to bed at 20:30, so that would mean waking up at 2:40 netted me about six hours. That’s usually all I need. Oh good, I was about to start worrying. Which I probably shouldn’t do, for reasons of health rather than… well, reason.

Not entirely sure how the day is going to go. My brother’s coming to hang out, but Dither is also leaving to help a friend move. Lisa is coming in the evening, after Divina’s birthday party, which Ethan also has to attend, as everyone else who represents our family is out of state. But I think he’s coming back. Either way, we’re gonna watch Flash Gordon. Because it is awesome and I get to say.

Yesterday, I did end up doing quite a bit in Desiderata. Some of that was to go back and play through what we’ve already done. I fixed one or two things, remembered how much I hate the desert (not the real one), and I’m about to start the very event-heavy part of Chapter Two.

Progress-wise, I have maybe two sidequests left, and then I absolutely have to continue with the plot. Which I’m still procrastinate-y on, and I’m still not sure as to why. The two sidequests that are left are also really complicated. One absolutely demands close collaboration with Dither, while the other… probably requires the same, but is even more difficult, as it reaches back through to two instances in the relatively complete portion of the game. And into the future.

…I don’t know what I want for my birthday. People have asked me, and I have always a resounding, “No earthly clue.” Have I outgrown it? Or have I just gotten used to buying or denying the few things I want?

Heard back on the pre-eclampsia, it’s a negative. So that’s good. Unfortunately, also heard back about the GTT and it’s a little high, so I have to go in on Wednesday for the time-sucking three hour test. I really, really hate the idea of this one. Even more than the whole bedrest and magnesium and worrying about early birth thing. For some reason, it was easier to adjust to the idea of pre-eclampsia. I felt like I knew what to do about that one.

Gestational diabetes just sucks. And I’m particularly high risk. I’m glad that I asked for another test, especially since it’s come to this–GD scares the crap out of me–but it still sucks.

So I’m keeping busy until Wednesday, trying to keep my mind off of it. Even started exercising, since suddenly parts of my body are actually working. Walking around the flat for a prolonged period of time, and keeping up my flexion exercise on my fingers. My right ring finger is still pulling lock-up shenanigans, but hopefully that’ll let up. It makes typing weird and picking stuff up a little scary.

I’ve still got all that big obnoxious stuff to event in Desiderata, but I took a chunk out of the optional step I mentioned in my last post. It requires even more checks and repetitive “are you sure” stuff than I had initially planned, but so far, it’s not too bad. I’m taking a break.

HabitRPG still isn’t at its most stable, but I’ve found ways to make it work. I added quite a few dailies (my exercise, for one) and now I’m considering using it to get myself working on Esperanto again. I’ve got a copy of Ivy Kellerman on my iPad now, and I think I’m going to make a new account on lernu, so I can start fresh. We’ll see. Finished two more books yesterday, too.

It’s going to be really funny when Owen is born and all of this stuff goes onto the, “Wow, remember when I had time to even think about that stuff?” list.

So, after all of the fuss that was made… Heh, seriously, when I say, “all the fuss,” I am not exaggerating. My OB ordered three tests, one of which sent me up the hill to the university hospital. There, a nurse, a phlebotomist, and two midwives hovered over me, literally for hours.

They monitored Owen’s heartbeat and movement, which were both great (he must just be most active after 17:00), but with my BP being INSANE they drew a bunch of blood and nearly sent me home (twice!) with a duplicate of test equipment I’d already gotten from the other lab. I also got a shot of some sort of steroid that will help Owen’s lungs develop faster in case we have to induce. First shot of two.

Then we go in to get the second shot and turn in the twenty-four hour test last night, and we get one nurse who takes her bloody time and nearly forgets to pick up the twenty-four hour test after giving me the shot.

Mixed messages, much?

I honestly packed a quickie version of my hospital bag in case the test results came back saying PRE-ECLAMPSIA and staff kermit-flailed until I got into a hospital bed. It’s not like I want to have this scary thing happen–we are not even stuff-equipped for Owen to be premature, haven’t even got the right size nappies–I just want some consistency. Don’t scare me if it’s not necessary!

um. Anyway.

I worked on Desiderata for a good hour today, finished up a sidequest that’s mostly just dialogue fun. I still have missing maps, which includes the arena. The arena should be a good chunk of thingy, too, but I think it can wait, since I’ve got to place a lot more sidequests, let alone write and event them. There are five of them, one of which is a multi-tiered endeavour, and another which may require me to add or complete a few NPCs in one area of the city.

There are also at least six major plot-related quests that need writing, and since they are basically three independent pairs, that’s a lot of work. It’s that wizard-choosing thing. This is where the game branches on a major level–the first level of wizard quests can all be done, but the second level marks the choice.

One of the wizards has an extra but optional step that can, in combination with a previous happening, knock down his price from 200 to as low as 120 (180 if you don’t have the other thing done, and it’s not something you get a second chance at). I have to write that, and it’ll probably be the reason that I go through his plot quest first.

Also reading another Poirot mystery. Strangely, I don’t think he shows up until at least ten chapters in. Which is weird. It’s an experience, reading them with what was a stronger familiarity with Sherlock Holmes. They have very different chronology and status quos.

As I’m sure I’ve said (read: whined about a lot), I have been putting off my current work in Desiderata for a long time. Ninety per cent of that has certainly been due to pregnesia and malaise (pregmalaisia?) but there’s also the quest itself.

I do like writing Arthur, but he existed in the limbo of concept and future planning for such a long time that I built myself some very unreal expectations. He ought to be likeable, although he is entirely optional if the player doesn’t like him. But his likeability is based on charm and humour. Both of which, especially the latter, have incredibly high standards. To do less than meet them is to fail.

But what I mean to really go on about is the eventing/coding involved.

If people want a novel, they acquire a novel. Linearity is a given in a novel, and it works in a manner similar to film and even television, to some extent. (when you bring the concept of series into it, there are some that can be seen out of order, and some that suffer for it) However, video games are not like any of these things.

Even in an RPG that has a central plot line that is told in a linear fashion, the player has options to do things out of order. The degree of freedom varies.

Quest for Glory – Acts a bit like a checklist. Most goals are open to the player immediately, some must be unlocked, and others are time-sensitive or time-specific. But there is not necessarily a mandatory order in which you must complete them. Some are even optional. This is the case for most point-and-click adventure games.

Jade Empire – Locks the player into one location or location set. There may be a lot of sidequests within that location, and you don’t even have to bother with most of them, but you only have access to them while you are in that location. Once you have progressed the rigidly linear plot to the next point, you move to the next location and can’t go backwards. This is a decent amount of freedom, but more rigidly structured.

Final Fantasy 13 – The hallway. Absolutely no feature of the game is accessible to the player unless the game permits it. From the story progression to options in the menu, everything is dictated by fixed advancement.

Seems I managed a bit of a scale, there. As far as we’ve plotted and carried things out in Desiderata, we have a sort of Jade Empire model for player freedom. Funny to say that though, since this location marks the point where the player can actually begin to backtrack travel, and although the story remains rather linear, you have a game-changing decision to make.

Quests can also vary in freedom and linearity. For example, in the quest that allows you to hire the lady wizard Fienna upon completion, the steps are linear. You accept the quest, retrieve an item, fight a monster, chase a frog, and return to Fienna. There’s more to it in the quest completion sequence, but that’s something else.

For Arthur, you have to talk to a few different merchants to obtain spell components. You can speak to them in any order–and one of them will offer you something you don’t want.

For the player, this should be a given. For me, eventing it, I had to make a way that the characters would inform the player that the task was completed without forcing them to speak to the merchants in a particular order.

The way I did this was to nest conditional branches. A conditional branch checks the information present in the game, and acts accordingly. For example, let’s say you want an NPC to say something to the players, but what he says is different based on whether they chose the sword or the bow at some previous juncture.

There are different ways to do that. Simplest would be if they had to choose one or the other and could not have chosen neither, merely make a conditional branch checking for one of the items (doesn’t matter which) and set conditions for if it is not present. That will get you this:

If SWORD is in inventory:
NPC says, “I see you are a warrior!”

Else:
NPC says, “You must be a fine shot.”

The else branch would be called into play if the sword was not chosen, and you as the writer know that if it was not chosen, the bow will have to be in the inventory instead.

This is one of the easiest uses of conditional branches. But my problem with the merchants was a more complicated one. There are more items involved.

Luckily, each of the merchants provides one of the three items in question. So I make a nested conditional branch to check for the other two, so that the game can check if they have all been gathered. This means that after I make the first check, the first action made is to make another check. Thusly:

If CANDLE is in inventory:
If MUSHROOM is in inventory:
PC says, “We’re done with this quest!”

This basically means that the game checks for the candle, and then checks for the mushroom. If the candle isn’t there, it doesn’t bother looking for the mushroom and life goes on.

The thing to keep in mind with these nested conditional branches is that they are performed in order. So if you’re doing something more complicated, which I have, you might have to have multiple nests. This is mostly necessary for times when you have to have different combinations of checks, e.g., the first step is the most important and subject to complex change.

Now that I’ve babble on and on about this, I’m still not sure I’ve managed to explain it properly. But I hope it’s a little clearer to people who have never used conditional branches (and actually know something about RPG Maker).